


When You're In It, You Can't See It

by FlirtyFroggy



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcoholism, Drowning, Gen, bad decision making, because 'getting everyone tortured and kidnapped' obviously wasn't it, bereavement, how did they think this was going to go, i spent way too much time contemplating the questions, the usual booker warnings, what even was the plan in the first place, what the hell were booker and copley thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26771566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlirtyFroggy/pseuds/FlirtyFroggy
Summary: Andy was bleeding a million miles away on the other side of Copley’s study. Somewhere, Quỳnh was screaming on the ocean floor and Joe and Nicky were in a cage. Nile was god knew where but at least she wasn’t here. Booker was somewhere outside of himself, which wasn’t unusual. But this time was different. He couldn’t see himself. He couldn’t even see the others. He was looking behind himself. At the meeting with Copley and the promises he had made. At the path that had led him — them — to this point, and at all the decisions and lies and half-truths and fantasies and dreams that littered it. And none of it made any goddamn sense at all.Booker remembers too late that you should never trust a devious bastard. Especially when that devious bastard is you.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Everyone
Comments: 32
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a light fic, exactly, but I have tried to keep the tone in line with Booker's sense of humour so it shouldn't be too heavy, I hope. Any story about Booker's descent into what the fuckery will encompass some heavy issues though: drinking too much, Quỳnh drowning, Booker's death wish, parental bereavement, betraying everyone who loves you etc. Booker dreams of several people's deaths and they are described briefly but quite graphically. The dreams are in italics and are generally only a line or two long.

It had all seemed so reasonable at the time.

A few samples, Copley had said. His team would come in after they had left and take them from the scene. The others wouldn’t even need to know. If anything came of Merrick’s research he would let them know. If nothing did, they would be none the wiser.

Now Nicky couldn’t look at him and Joe apparently couldn’t stop and Booker couldn’t blame them. And _Andy_. Fuck, Andy.

And it had all seemed so fucking reasonable at the time.

~~

“Mr Copley,” Booker said, sliding onto a bar stool beside him.

“Booker. Good to see you again. Drink? They have a nice cognac here.”

“Sure.” Copley gestured to the bartender. “You know,” Booker said as he accepted his drink. “Andy would be pissed if she knew I was here. We don’t do repeats.”

“Hmm. Why is that, exactly?”

“Variety is the spice of life.” He sipped his drink. “Listen, you’re right, this is nice cognac but I can get nice cognac in lots of places. You said you had something important for us.”

“I do indeed, Sebastien.”

Booker paused. His first instinct was to run. His second instinct was to punch Copley in the face and then run. But he needed to know what Copley knew. Perhaps all he had was his first name. Perhaps he was just fishing. He took another sip from his drink, kept his face as neutral as he could, and gestured at Copley to continue.

“Sebastien le Livre. Born 1770. Hanged for desertion in 1812.” Booker was out of his seat and leaning into Copley before he’d finished speaking, one hand curled in his lapel and a knife pressed to his ribs, where the bartender couldn’t see. Looking back, Booker would recognise this as the last time he was afloat. Everything after this was just sinking, pulled down and ever further down by the undertow. This was the moment he should have walked away. Just turned around and gone to the others and told them they were exposed. Hell, gutting Copley right there and dealing with the consequences would have been better. But he hesitated. Just long enough for Copley to say, with unbearable kindness, “Your son died of cancer in 1842”.

It was like being shot in the gut. It was like drowning. He lowered the knife and let go of Copley’s jacket but didn’t step away, frozen to the spot, half in an over-priced bar in Amsterdam, half in a hospital room on the outskirts of Marseille. “How can you know—”

“I know a lot about you. I know the suffering you have endured and I know you have dedicated your life to trying to prevent the suffering of others. And I know how you can keep anyone from ever again suffering as your son did.”

Booker took a deep breath and pulled himself back into the present. “You going to cure cancer, Mr Copley?”

“No. You are.”

~~

The plan was simple. Present Andy with a mission she couldn’t refuse, lure the team into a trap, walk into the trap with them, get shot to shit, then get the hell out of there. Maybe the team would figure out it was a set up and they’d go to ground for a while, or they might not and they could carry on with business as usual. Either way, Copley’s team would come in after they were gone and gather the samples Merrick needed. Booker wasn’t wild about the leading his team into a trap and getting shot part, but you didn’t make the world better without spilling some blood, and a lot of the blood that got spilt was theirs, and they’d all made their peace with both those things a long time ago. It would hurt like hell for a while but that pain, at least, would pass quickly.

Booker had looked up Merrick and his company. The man himself was a self-aggrandising turd who wore hoodies under blazers (or possibly blazers _with hoods stitched into them_ , and Booker was not proud of how long he spent trying to figure out which it was) but his results couldn’t be argued with. Booker couldn’t understand most of the published research, he’d spent the last few decades frantically trying to keep up with communications technology not medicine, but the cancer survival rates alone were impressive. If Booker and the others could help with that, then they should. And there was the other thing. The whisper in his mind that he hadn’t dared share with Copley, that he hardly dared share even with himself: What if Merrick could help them? They could die after all, and something must trigger that. Maybe Merrick could find out what that was.

Maybe there was a way out.

~~

_He is drowning. Again. Lungs screaming, heart racing too fast, too fast, pounding in his ears, salt raw in his throat. Drowning shouldn’t burn so much but it does, it does, it always does, until it doesn’t. Until it stops._

_And begins again._

He came awake with a start and reached for his flask. He’d more or less perfected the amount of alcohol he needed to keep out the dreams of Jean-Pierre, of Marie and Claude and Philipe, at least while he was asleep. They haunted him during the day and there was no amount of alcohol he’d found that would stop them. But in sleep they usually didn’t bother him.

But there was no getting away from Quỳnh.

~~

The hotel in Marrakesh was nice, because Joe and Nicky had picked it. No need to stay in shit-holes when you didn’t need to. There would be plenty of time for that. He watched as Andy hugged Nicky and then Joe, felt the pull of their easy affection. He turned away and shut the door.

Nicky had tea ready for them, because of course he did. He poured for them, didn’t object when Booker ‘ruined’ his with some whiskey from his flask, then pulled out something small wrapped in white paper and handed it to Andy. A quick glance at Joe confirmed it was what Booker thought it was. He shook his head. Being a priest had left a deep mark on Nicky and he didn’t like having money. At least, Booker assumed that was why he was always giving him so much of it.

Entirely predictably, Andy nailed it. Entirely predictably, Nicky lost. Entirely predictably, Joe showed him no sympathy at all.

Entirely predictably, Booker needed to do hardly anything to convince the others to meet with Copley. The words ‘kidnapping in South Sudan’ had been all he needed to get Joe and Nicky on board. They knew what that meant. And then they’d convinced Andy because only sociopaths and inanimate objects could resist Nicky’s ‘it’s the right thing to do’ routine for long. By the time he was done, actually meeting with Copley was just a formality. No way was Andy going to say no.

She didn’t, and they set off for Sudan, and Booker felt that small flicker of hope flare up stronger. Things were going well and things were going to get better.

~~

Things went to hell almost immediately when the crack team of black ops specialists Copley had hired decided to hang around and have a fucking chat afterwards. Booker had told Copley how quickly they revived, he’d fucking told him. Copley’s guys should have left the second the last bullet was fired. Sure, they’d probably have died anyway, the team would have been right on their tails. But it might have been less obvious it was a set-up if they’d had to chase them around the compound. But as soon as Andy had seen the camera she’d known. Now she was freaking out, and so was Booker.

“We have to find Copley,” she said, looking more panicked than Booker had ever imagined she could. “We have to tie this thing off.”

“And then what?” Booker forced himself to sound calm, or as calm as might be considered reasonable for him to be in the circumstances. He didn’t know how calm that was. He didn’t object, per se, to Andy taking Copley’s head off with her labrys. He felt like he could murder Copley with his bare hands right now, the fucking idiot. But Copley was just trying to do what they were doing, trying to make things better. And he was the connection to Merrick. He was the only way Booker could find out how Merrick’s research was progressing.

“And then nothing. The world can burn for all I care.”

‘Nothing’ he could work with. ‘Tying off’ Copley was a problem but not an insurmountable one. All he had to do was keep failing to find him and eventually they’d have to let it go.

~~

He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. He should have fucking known.

~~

The freight train was definitely a downgrade from the hotel but they’d slept in worse places. Joe and Nicky were asleep first as usual, comfortable anywhere as long as they were wrapped around each other. Andy was propped up against the wall, fighting the pull as usual. Booker watched Joe and Nicky through heavy eyes and thought about them sleeping without each other. He’d seen it before, on jobs where they’d had to work apart or when Joe had fallen asleep on the couch. It was always the same. Without Joe’s weight to support him Nicky ended up sprawling on his back, waking every time he did. Without Nicky in his arms Joe hunched further and further inward, curling himself around nothing. Booker had little faith that whatever had brought them into this situation together would allow them to leave the same way, no matter what Nicky believed. One day, one of them would go, and where would the other be then? Endlessly vulnerable, forever trying to hold something that wasn’t there. Booker took a large swallow from his flask and drifted off.

_He can’t breathe and he’s burning again, burning and cold, copper and iron in his throat and mouth. Someone is screaming, the light is blinding, and he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe._

He came awake with a start and reached for his flask. It took him a second to realise the others were all awake too, looking as shaken as he felt. It took him another second to realise what this all meant. Shit. Joe and Nicky were talking, trying to piece it all together. Booker couldn’t think past the knife in his throat, the noose choking off his air, the water pouring into his lungs.

“What did you see?” Joe asked him.

Booker tried to summon up the dream, tried to see something other than blood. “I saw— I saw part of a name tag.”

“Uh, yeah. Free— Free something.”

“Yeah.” Could be. There was screaming and blood and a helicopter. “A medevac.” Somewhere beyond the screaming, Joe and Nicky were still talking. “I felt her die.”

He was getting really fucking tired of feeling people die. Andy was speaking but he could barely hear her, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t—

“We have to find her,” Joe said.

“No,” Booker found himself saying. “We stick to the plan. We find Copley.” That was something someone who actually wanted to find Copley would say, right?

“So we just leave her out in the open?”

“No, we’re in the open. We’re the ones who are exposed now.”

“Not like her, Booker,” Nicky said, and Booker knew any further discussion would be futile. Nicky was going to make some speech about how they couldn’t abandon her and he was fucking right of course, and besides there was no arguing with him once he was set on something. Booker tried anyway, because if he was going to spend god knew how long pretending Copley was eluding him he needed to set up his stall as someone who really wanted to find him. 

“Nicky—”

“Not like her. You can’t tell me you don’t remember what it was like.” And that was a low blow because he remembered it all too fucking well. “Whoever she is, she’s confused, and she’s scared, and she’s more alone than she has ever been in her entire life. We all remember what it was like.” Yep. There it was. But Nicky wasn’t done yet. He’d twist any number of knives to make sure they stuck to the right path. “She needs us.”

Andy slammed her hand against the floor in frustration and Booker felt like doing the same. Then he remembered he didn’t actually want to find Copley. He’d convinced himself, if no-one else.

“I’ll handle the retrieval,” Andy said, getting up.

“Hey, Boss, come on.” Nothing like playing your role to the hilt.

“If we’re dreaming about her, she’s dreaming about us. That makes her a beacon straight to us,” Andy said, as though that was all she cared about, as though that even made sense. Sometimes Booker wondered if any of them were telling the truth at all.

“What do we do in the meantime?”

“Get to France. Use the Charlie safe house. I’ll meet you there.” She took the paper Joe handed her, his sketch of the poor girl whose life, and throat, had just been ripped apart. “Find Copley.”

Sure thing, Boss.

~~

It was already dark when they arrived at Gousainville, grubby and disheveled and exhausted, but it was good to be home, or at least as close to home as they ever got. Charlie was a good place to bring the new girl, that was a smart move on Andy’s part. It had running water and a TV and a proper kitchen, and was picturesque in a rustic, partially abandoned kind of way. It was considerably more welcoming than a lot of their safe houses, some of which were literally holes in the ground. They got the generator going after the usual argument about how the fuck the thing actually worked, Joe swearing up a storm as they fumbled around in the light of Nicky’s phone. They turned the water on, drew lots for who was going to check the rat traps (Joe lost and Nicky and Booker really tried hard not to look too smug about it), and took the dustsheets off the furniture. They ate pears and peaches straight out of the tins and then fell into bed without bothering to shower, and there was no time or opportunity for Booker to check for messages from Copley. 

Booker dreamed only of his own death, the first one, which was not exactly an improvement on dreaming about Quỳnh or the new girl’s, but at least made for some variety.

The morning brought a shower and clean clothes and birdsong through the opened windows. In the kitchen Joe was singing along to the radio while Nicky opened more cans of fruit with the crappy old can-opener.

Joe broke off singing when Booker came in. “Good of you to finally join us.”

“Like you’ve been up since dawn? The shower was still dripping and the bathroom mirror was steamed up when I went in. And you used all the hot water, you bastards.”

Joe grinned at him. “We’ve been working hard.”

“You’re watching Nicky open a can of grapefruit.”

“Joe was doing it at first,” Nicky put in. “But he injured himself.”

Joe held up his hand, which had a smear of blood on it still but, of course, no injury. “It was very serious. I could have died.” The three of them sniggered.

“Do we have anything apart from canned fruit?” Booker asked.

“Are you rejecting my food?” Nicky slopped some pasty-looking grapefruit segments into three bowls. “That’s very rude.”

“No, I’m rejecting Mr Del Monte’s food,” Booker said. Nicky reached into a cupboard and pulled out a tin of carrots and a tin of haricot beans. He waved them at Booker with a pointed look. “No, thanks.”

“You are sure? I could sprinkle some cumin on them.” He pulled a jar of cumin out of the cupboard and frowned at the label. “Or not. How long ago were we last here?”

“A couple of years ago, I think?” Joe said, screwing up his face and looking at Booker for confirmation. Booker shrugged.

“I could make a decent soup out of what we’ve got,” Nicky said, passing them each a bowl. “But I would rather just eat the fruit and then send Joe out for some proper food.”

“You’re going out?” Booker asked Joe.

Joe nodded, swallowing his grapefruit with a grimace. He didn’t like sour things. “We need food. And a new can-opener, apparently. Any requests?”

“Anything that hasn’t come out of a can is fine by me. The new girl will need some clothes.” Joe waved a hand to say ‘I know’. “You heard anything from Andy yet?” Joe shook his head.

“Will she need anything else? The new girl? What will she want?” Nicky said. Joe and Booker shrugged. “You are both very helpful.”

“You dream about her last night?” Booker asked, then sighed when they both answered in the negative. “It’s a shame the dreams can’t show us other things. Useful things. Like, favourite food or if they’re scared of spiders.” They all looked up at the cobweb covered ceiling, then back at each other.

“They can, if they go on long enough. I mean, you see snippets of their lives, the things they’re doing. If you see them eating burgers a lot, they probably like burgers,” Joe said.

“I don’t think there’s any way to make this process easier,” Nicky said. “You just have to try to make it… not worse.” They all chewed thoughtfully on their grapefruit. The taste was fine, unless you were Joe, but there was no getting away from the stringiness. “What do you think they will do with her. The American military, I mean. If Andy can’t get to her.”

“Don’t know. Testing, I suppose,” Joe said. “A soldier who can’t die. I imagine they’d be very interested in that.”

“Andy’ll get her,” Booker said, with absolute conviction.

~~  
Joe had gone out and Nicky had armed himself with a broom and was doing battle with the cobwebs. Booker was pretending to look for Copley and trying to look bored so that Nicky, ever observant, didn’t notice that Booker's world had just collapsed. There was a message from Copley. Sudan had gone even worse than he’d thought. Not only had Andy figured out Copley’s masterplan in a matter of seconds, but now it turned out they hadn’t been able to get any samples from the site. Not a single fucking one. Apparently, sixteen people being hacked to death with swords and axes left a lot of blood behind. So much blood that there was no way to distinguish between their blood and the team’s blood. All that for absolutely nothing.

**Merrick wants you all to come in so he can take the samples directly. Will the others agree? If not, I will send a team to get you if you send me your location.**

The message swam before Booker’s eyes. Will the others agree? No. No they will not. Just realising Copley knew about them had sent Andy into a tailspin, and Joe and Nicky would follow her lead. So that just left taking them against their will. He took a swig from his flask. Was it really any different to leading them into the trap in Sudan? They had to do lots of things they didn’t like in service of the greater good. This could cure disease and give them a way out of their endless lives. They could have a choice, for once. It was a small sacrifice, really, considering the possibilities. Even if nothing came of it, it was worth a shot. 

He sent Copley their location.

~~

_He is drowning. The water burns his throat, his eyes, his lungs. The water is as cold and dark as a Russian winter but his lungs burn and burn and burn._

He snapped awake earlier than usual, reaching for his gun as the bed beside him shifted. Nile. She was sitting up, gasping for breath. “Sorry. Just a bad dream.” He settled back with a sigh.

“Tell us,” Nicky said. Booker stared at a peeling patch of wallpaper across the room, the pattern drifting in and out of focus. He did not need to hear about Quỳnh’s screams and bloody fists. He did not need to hear Quỳnh’s story. He did not need to see the look on Andy’s face. He was already desperately familiar with those things. What exactly had they done to deserve this cruelty? Nothing. They had done nothing. Andy did not deserve to lose her love, Joe and Nicky did not deserve to lose their friend. Quỳnh did not deserve to die over and over and over again. With no way out. And always with the threat it might happen again. To any of them.

“Booker.” Joe’s voice reached him through the depths. “Booker.” A hand on his shoulder. Booker blinked round the room. He and Joe were the only ones in it. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah. Zoned out for a second there, sorry. Can’t get a decent night’s sleep around here.” Joe chuckled but he still looked worried. “Where are the others?”

“Nicky’s in the other room. Andy and Nile went outside to… talk.”

“Talk?”

“There may be some heated discussion.”

“Did I tell you she stabbed Andy?”

Joe laughed properly at that. “She’s going to fit right in.”

“Yeah.”

“It takes time. To adjust.” Joe was giving him that worried look again.

“Well, she’s going to have plenty of it.” He glanced at the clock. “Football’s on. Want to watch with me?”

Joe sighed. “Sure. I don’t think I’ll be getting back to sleep any time soon.” He held out a hand and pulled Booker off the bed. “After you,” he said with a flourish. He squeezed Booker’s shoulder as he passed, briefly but surely. Booker hesitated, leaned into it a fraction too late. Over two hundred years and he still couldn’t get this stuff quite right.

They turned on the TV and watched the game.

~~

Joe and Nicky taken, Booker blown to shit and left behind, and Andy left to run free and take out what was probably Copley’s entire team. What a fucking cock-up. He hadn’t even fucking warned him when it was going to happen or checked that they were all in the church. What the hell had Copley’s job even been at the CIA? Booker had never asked. Copley could research and gather intel, he made contact with outside operatives, and he knew his way around the tech stuff. He had enough knowledge of the kind of jobs the team did to create a bullshit one, but had probably never planned or run an actual op in his life and apparently couldn’t think on his feet when things went sideways. An entire career sat behind a desk with occassional mysterious meetings in cafes and bars, most likely. Fuck. 

No matter. He could still do this. They could still pull this off. Get everyone to Merrick, give him the samples he needed, then get out. The team would be furious about his underhanded tactics but he could live with that. They’d understand, eventually. They’d understand.

~~

Booker had addded Nile to his list of People Who Did Not Deserve This. The list was basically everyone who was stuck in this shitty situation, but still.

She was sweet and tough. Scared out of her mind, obviously, but still going. And she was smart. Smart enough to ask him if he had a satellite link. Smart enough to ask if he’d tried following the money to Copley. Smart enough to realise he hadn’t despite what he said. Hopefully she would assume he just hadn’t thought of it rather than he deliberately hadn’t done it. Older people were supposed to be bad with computers, right?

Smart enough, he hoped, to listen to the only help he was likely to be able to give her. There was no way to make this easy, Nicky had said. We can only make it not worse. Watching your family suffer and fade away before your eyes was worse. Watching them grow to hate you was worse. If she could learn from his mistakes, that would be something at least. It was hard to talk about. He had never, he realised, really talked about it. The others had been there when it happened, watched him go through it all; offered comfort and company when he wanted it and understood when he didn’t. But he had never told them exactly what had happened, what Jean-Pierre said. He had never told anyone. It was hard to talk about. But this was what he could do, what he could offer her. This, and the possibility of an end, one day.

So, he talked. The words caught in his throat, choking him like water, like blood, like rope. But he forced them out anyway, and he’d heard somewhere that this was supposed to help, that he would feel lighter once the words were spoken. But the weight of the words had never been the problem. 

He was scaring her, he knew. He could see it. He felt bad about it, but that was how this life was. You caused a little pain now, to spare a lot of pain later. That was what they did.

~~

Perhaps he had overdone it a little. Perhaps he had scared Nile too much. Or perhaps she would have left anyway. There was nothing to be done about it now. She’d come back to them sooner or later, or they’d find her. What other choice was there? He had a moment of panic that he was now a person short, then realised he hadn’t actually told Copley about her. No matter. Samples from four immortals was what they were after, and that was what they were going to get.

He hadn’t really planned to shoot Andy. He’d known they would have to subdue her somehow, but he’d kind of assumed Merrick’s people would be at Copley’s waiting for them. But it was just Copley in his study, and Andy with her back to him, because why wouldn’t she turn her back to him? And really, it was nothing. A single bullet wound, they took those all the time. It was normal for them. A couple of days ago he’d sat in a chair and watched his intestines reform. This was nothing. Still, he felt sick as he raised his gun. His hand shook slightly, which was crazy because this was nothing, compared to what they’d already been through, what they would go through in the future. He took a breath and pulled the trigger. She would be fine. She’d be pissed as hell but she’d be fine. And she’d understand. If anyone would, it would be her. He bound her hands and held her still and noticed he was still trembling. He couldn’t feel it, but he could see it in the arm he had round her neck. She pulled away from him and he let her go. Copley was explaining everything to her but he could see she wasn’t getting it. She didn’t know Copley. He was a stranger. He moved closer.  
  
“Andy—”

“Don’t, you fucking coward.” It hurt, but he’d known it would. And it wasn’t like she was wrong. “Why? Why, Book?”

“Andy, listen—”

“Why?”

He knelt in front of her. This time she let him. “If Merrick can discover why we keep living, he might find a way to end it.” Her eyes softened and relief settled into him, deep in his bones. She understood. He’d known she would. “That’s what you wanted.”

“Oh, Book, what have you done?” Her eyes were still soft and she still understood. But the relief flowed out of him as easily as it had flowed in. There was a roaring in his ears. “Not like this, Book.” His hand fell on something sticky. Andy’s blood. There was too much of it. He pulled her jacket aside and for a second he couldn’t breathe. He was underwater, in the cold and the dark. 

“You’re still bleeding,” he managed. “You’re still bleeding.” Andy was bleeding. She was bleeding and it wasn’t stopping, she wasn’t healing. He was dimly aware that he was talking and Copley was talking and he was handing him a towel and Andy was still bleeding. He dragged his eyes away from the wound and looked at her face. “Andy look at me. Look at me.” She did so, reluctantly. She’d never been reluctant to look at him before. Andy always looked you straight in the eye, good or bad. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything.” And it hurt. It hurt because she was right and she was wrong but there wasn’t time for that now. They needed to get her out of here, she needed help, she needed—

Merrick and his goons chose that moment to show up, and Booker was actually relieved. They could help her, they could treat her.

But Merrick wasn’t interested in helping her. He was interested in the blood seeping through her clothes and in her age and in why she wasn’t healing any more. He asked pointless questions, dispassionately curious, while blood pumped endlessly from her side. Booker barely even noticed Merrick’s men had taken hold of his arms, bound his hands, as though he hadn’t agreed to go with them willingly. Andy was bleeding a million miles away on the other side of Copley’s study. Somewhere, Quỳnh was screaming on the ocean floor and Joe and Nicky were in a cage. Nile was god knew where but at least she wasn’t here. Booker was somewhere outside of himself, which wasn’t unusual. But this time was different. He couldn’t see himself. He couldn’t even see the others. He was looking behind himself. At the meeting with Copley and the promises he had made. At the path that had led him — them — to this point, and at all the decisions and lies and half-truths and fantasies and dreams that littered it. And none of it made any goddamn sense at all.

Merrick’s men moved for them both. There was no point in fighting them but he tried anyway. What else could he do?

“I’m sorry, Andy. I’m sorry.”

_I’m sorry, Andy, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

~~

There was a weird echo in the lab. Joe was shouting, and his voice said, “You’re a very pathetic man, Booker.”

But the echo said, “You don’t love me.” The echo said, “You are weak, and selfish.”

He tried to explain. They didn’t know what it was like to be alone. He needed them to understand. They had to understand. “You and Nicky always had each other, right? And all we had was our grief.”

“Well now you have even more.”

And there was nothing at all he could say to that.

~~

It was probably a bad idea. Most of his ideas were, it turned out. But they deserved an apology, for however much it was worth, and it might be the only chance he would get. He knew what was coming tomorrow. There was no point talking to Nicky. He may as well talk to the wall. Just Joe, then. He caught his arm, lightly, so he could pull away if he wanted to.

“Joe—”

“Don’t,” he said, quietly, like he was too exhausted to even be angry any more. The anger was still there though, in his eyes. “I know you’re sorry, Book. I know. It doesn’t change anything.” He pulled his arm away from where Booker’s fingers still grasped his sleeve, turned and went into the bedroom. Shut the door.

Booker was still standing in the hallway, staring at the closed door, when Nile came out of the bathroom. “Hey,” she said quietly. “Your turn.” She nudged him gently into the bathroom. “I’m not helping you get undressed, so you’d better pull yourself together.” He smiled at her, a little too late and pulling painfully, but it couldn’t have looked too bad because she smiled back before she shut the door. He sat on the floor with his back against the ancient radiator and, for the first time in a long time, he wept.

~~

It seemed absurd, looking back, that he’d been able to take this as far as he had. That none of them, not one of them, had looked at what was going on and thought ‘something doesn’t add up here’. Because it would never occur to them. Not once, in their wildest, darkest thoughts would they think he would do what he had done. It was unimaginable that one of them would betray the others, and so none of them had imagined it. 

Nicky hadn’t looked at him since he found out what he’d done. Not once, not even by accident. It was impressive, really. Joe liked to joke that Nicky could hold a grudge for centuries, and everyone always laughed, including Nicky. It didn’t seem quite so funny now.

Joe was incapable of holding a grudge for more than about five minutes, but he was giving it a good go. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Booker though, kept looking at him like he expected to see something different each time. His brother, perhaps, instead of a traitor. It twisted something in Booker’s chest every time but it was preferable to watching Nicky’s jaw twitch.

Nile didn’t get it. She was new, she was too deep in the strangeness of it all, in the loss of her own family, to understand what he’d thrown away, what he’d rejected. He hadn’t understood it himself and he’d had a couple of centuries to do so. Nile was considerably smarter than him though so he was confident she would figure it all out. Probably before he did.

Andy was dying. Fuck, Andy was dying and he was never going to see her again and she’d told him to have faith but she hadn’t told him what to have faith in. A cruel, capricious higher power? What good had that done them up to now? In himself? Not likely. In them? He’d always had faith in them, hadn’t he?

They turned away, one by one. Joe hung back and for a desperate second Booker hoped he might stay, even though he knew he wouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Couldn’t. He gave him a nod. _Go. It’s ok._ It wasn’t, but what else could they do? This was the only way forward. Booker was alone and perhaps it was for the best. For sure it was what he deserved. But god, it hurt.

He needed to figure things out. He knew that. Figure out what was wrong with him, besides the obvious. He still wasn’t sure how he had got to the point of thinking it was a good idea to have his team forcibly kidnapped by mercenaries, or why he had believed that someone who would do that was a reasonable person with good intentions. Hindsight was supposed to make everything clearer, but looking back on the past few days, the past few _months_ , was like trying to look at the bottom of the Thames. He threw a pebble in the river. Then another. He needed to pull himself together. Probably he needed to stop drinking. He didn’t know how to do those things, but he could work on it.

He had plenty of time.

~~

_He is drowning. The water is cold and dark and stings his eyes. His mouth fills with salt, with copper, with iron. Somewhere, someone is screaming. It might be him. His throat tightens, chokes. His lungs burn. He can’t breathe, he cant breathe, he can’t breathe._

He woke with a start and reached for his flask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, it turns out the answer to 'Why did Booker and Copley do xyz?' is 'narrative expediency'. Copley's plan is garbage because the plot requires it to be. Booker keeps going with the plan even when it all goes to shit because the plot requires him to. Booker doesn't tell Copley about Nile because the plot requires him not to. This made writing this fic quite difficult at times. Fortunately, however, the narrative also loads Booker up with _so much trauma_ that it makes sense that none of his actions make sense. So, there's that.
> 
> I might add a little coda to this to correspond with the six months later of the movie where Booker is clearly not getting his shit together. If I do I'll probably do that next week some time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Six Months Later...**

He woke up groggy and disoriented in the cold light of an autumn dawn. The sound of Paris starting its day filtered through the drafty window frame, but inside the apartment was utter silence. There was nobody sleeping across the room, nobody pottering around the kitchen, nobody swearing in the shower as the hot water suddenly turned cold, nobody watching TV or just sitting quietly reading a book. There was nobody here but him.

It was strange, he thought, what a difference it made. He had been alone before. He’d been alone for an entire year before Copley and Merrick and… everything. It wasn’t always good, or even okay, but it was never like this. He was so aware now, all the time, of their absence. It turned out there was alone, and then there was alone. There was silence, and then there was silence.

Then he thought, what a shitty, depressing thought to start the day with.

He forced himself out of bed, showered, dressed in clothes that seemed like they might be clean. He made himself some toast and coffee and stood at the kitchen sink, a piece of toast in one hand and a bottle of cheap nasty vodka in the other. He upended the vodka bottle over the sink and watched its contents swirl down the plughole while he munched on the toast. When it was empty, he reached into the bag on the counter, pulled out the next bottle, and repeated the process. He appeared to have bought quite a lot of cheap nasty vodka last night. There were four bottles in the bag and he’d found three empty ones on the floor by the sofa. He doubted he had emptied those down the sink. 

This was, he was pretty sure, day 176 of his 36,500 day banishment and this was approximately the 140th morning he had spent pouring last night’s booze down the drain.

It was a lot harder giving up drinking than he felt it should be, given that he had no physical dependency to contend with. He was fine most mornings, unless the dreams had been particularly bad. Dreams where Quỳnh drowning became Andy who became Joe then Nicky and then Nile. Dreams where Andy bled out on Copley’s floor until her eyes were glassy and cold and unforgiving. Dreams where Joe died slowly in a hospital in Marseille, cursing his name. On those days he would remain unmoving in bed until he either fell asleep again or was driven out in search of whatever he had procured the night before. Most mornings, though, he woke up feeling, if not positive then at least like the day might be okay. But then the morning dragged on. And on. And on. He ate lunch, and then the afternoon dragged on. And on. And on. By dusk he would be crawling out of his skin because there were still over 36,000 of these days to go, not to mention god knew how many more days after that.

He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He knew he couldn’t carry on as he had been, but beyond that he was lost. He’d picked not drinking as a solid place he could start, a thing he knew he shouldn’t be doing that he could stop doing. He knew it clouded his judgment. But most days he was having a bottle of wine with dinner, or earlier, and then another and another. And then he was waking up in the morning with a bag full of shit vodka and only the vaguest idea of how that had happened.

He rinsed out the vodka bottles and put them in the recycling, finished his coffee, and stared down the barrel of another day.

He needed to get out of this fucking apartment.

He grabbed his jacket and headed out. He liked walking. He could pretend he was going somewhere.

He picked a direction at random and made his way through the crowds of people heading to work. Perhaps he could get a job. A normal one. Just for a while. It would give him something to do, at least. He tried to picture himself behind the counter of a shop. He could do a shop, he thought. He could talk to people, be charming when he wanted to be. But he couldn’t make the image fit. He’d been outside the world for over 200 years, how would he ever step back into it? Was he supposed to make small talk with his co-workers? ‘Oh, my family? All dead. Then there’s my second family, who I don’t see because I betrayed them all in a deeply misguided attempt to help them and also kill myself. And you?’

His shoulder clipped someone as he walked by, someone with dark curls and a leather jacket. His heart stuttered and sped up before he registered that it was a stranger. He muttered an apology and carried on. How long would it be before he stopped seeing them everywhere? How long had it been before he'd stopped seeing his wife and sons? He couldn't remember. It was probably different when the people in question weren't dead. The possibility that they _might_ be in Paris, that he _might_ actually bump into them somewhere was all too real. The hope was agonising. He might see Andy again, one last time. Or he might not.

He walked for hours before his stomach told him it was time for lunch. He stopped at the first café he saw. No matter how bad he got, he always ate as well as he could. After you’ve starved to death a couple of times you don’t ignore hunger. He was finishing his soup when a couple sat down at the table beside him. The man’s phone rang and he answered it in Italian.

He didn’t sound very much like Nicky at all, not really, but Booker was pitched back a hundred or so years anyway.

He couldn’t remember where they’d been or why, but they had sat on a sofa by an empty fireplace, drinking and talking.It was a nothing memory really, just another evening in another safe house. There was no reason to remember it now, except that he missed Nicky’s voice and Nicky’s presence and the way he’d always known when Booker needed to talk and when he needed to be quiet. And Booker had always felt like he was missing something. That Nicky was waiting for something from him but Booker didn’t know what it was, but it was okay because Nicky wouldn’t push.

He signalled the waiter and ordered a bottle of wine.

~~

He knew he’d had too much to drink not because he kept stumbling but because his thoughts were going to a place he didn’t like, coming from a part of himself he didn’t like. A low-thrumming frustrated anger at the others that they didn’t deserve. What had they expected? Why had they acted so shocked, so hurt, that he had done it? Surely they must have known, must have seen this coming. Not the specifics, of course, but something like this was always going to happen. He was always going to let them down. It was what he did. It was inevitable, really.

He pushed open the door to his apartment building, tripped and dropped the bottle he was holding. It smashed on the ground and he kicked the glass away. Probably for the best. There hadn’t been much left anyway. He sat on the step and warred with the parts of himself that wanted to go back out and buy another bottle and make it all go away. For a time, at least. He thought of the others, what they would say if they could see him now. Not a lot, probably. They’d just look disappointed. He didn’t know why they kept being disappointed in him, like they expected better.

He hauled himself up and put the key in the lock. The door moved at his touch. He had definitely locked it when he left that morning. He definitely had because he was, mostly, a _functional_ alcoholic thank you very much and he always locked his door. Which meant someone else had unlocked it. For a moment he thought, hoped, it might be Joe. But Joe wouldn’t be so careless as to leave it unlocked. Which meant it was someone else.

All this flashed through his head in a second; he had his gun in his hand before he’d really thought about and was pushing the door open, ready.

Somehow, he wasn’t all that surprised that it was Quỳnh. He realised belatedly that he hadn’t dreamed of her drowning for some time. He’d still dreamed of her, of course. Dreamed of her pain and fear and rage. They’d felt so much like drowning he hadn’t noticed the difference. He should probably feel afraid, or at least worried, and distantly he did. Mostly he felt relieved. The dreams would stop now, at last. Those dreams, anyway. And at least something was happening now. He was reasonably confident that, for the first time in months, tomorrow wasn’t going to be exactly the same as yesterday.

He kept the gun trained on her all the same.


End file.
